Can America bring Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook to heel?

Daniel Ek has been tussling with Apple for years. The founder of Spotify has long argued that the iPhone maker does not fight fair because it takes a 15% to 30% cut of subscription fees on Spotify apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store, but waives the cost for its own music streaming service.

Last week the 36-year-old Swede stepped up his fight, launching an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. His gambit was well-timed, coming a day after the British government published a damning 150-page report that called for a crackdown on Apple and the other big tech companies.

Jason Furman, a former adviser to Barack Obama, who oversaw the report, called for a new competition body to rein in a “few companies” that have…